Our People

Rebecca Wickes is the Director of the Monash Migration and Inclusion Centre. She is an Associate Professor and Head of Criminology at the School of Social Sciences (SoSS), Monash University.

Her research focusses on demographic changes in urban communities and their influence on social cohesion and the concentration of social problems. She is the lead investigator of the Australian Community Capacity Study (ACCS), a multi-million, multi-site, longitudinal study of urban neighbourhoods.

Marie Segrave is a Researcher with The Border Crossing Observatory (BOb) and Monash Gender and Family Violence. She researches in a wide range of areas but her work is primarily concerned with migration, regulation, exploitation, and criminalisation.

Marie’s current research projects are focused on temporary migration & labour exploitation in Australia, temporary migration and family violence and human trafficking and modern slavery.

Helen Forbes-Mewett is Senior Lecturer in Sociology and interdisciplinary researcher in the School of Social Sciences at Monash University. She led the Migration and Social Cohesion research hub in the Centre for Social and Population Research (CSPR) and is now a member of the MMIC Executive. Helen was ARC Research Postdoctoral Fellow 2010-2014 and undertook a major study focusing on International Student Safety from Crime. In 2014, Helen was commended by Monash University for her contribution to social justice and inclusion.

Helen’s interdisciplinary work focuses on human security, migration, cultural diversity, international education and social cohesion. She is currently on the Victorian Multicultural Commission, Regional Advisory Committee, and has published the following books: International Student Security; International Students and Crime; and the recently published The New Security: Individual, Community and Cultural Experiences.

Rebecca Powell is the Research Manager of MMIC and the Managing-Director of the Border Crossing Observatory. She has worked as a senior researcher on a number of irregular migration research projects hosted by the Border Crossing Observatory and has previous experience working as an international research consultant on trafficking in persons and smuggling of migrants for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and the Asia Regional Trafficking in Persons Project.

Rebecca is currently completing a PhD by publications part time titled ‘‘I still call Australia home’: The deportation of convicted non-citizens from Australia and the impact of policy and practice from a criminological perspective.’

Dharma is a Social Demographer in the Sociology Program in the School of Social Sciences. He received his PhD in Demography from the Australian National University and was a Rockefeller Postdoctoral Fellow at the Population Studies Centre, University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, USA). Before joining Monash University, he taught at the Department of Societies and Cultures, University of Waikato, New Zealand.

Dharma’s current research focuses on: fertility and partnering, social cohesion, international migration, family and household structures, population research, ageing and health. Dharma’s research also covers demographic issues in India.

Leanne Weber is Associate Professor of Criminology, co-Director of the Border Crossing Observatory and Australian Research Council Future Fellow in the School of Social Sciences at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. She researches border control and migration policing using criminological and human rights frameworks.

Her books include The Routledge International Handbook on Criminology and Human Rights, 2017 (with Elaine Fishwick and Marinella Marmo), Policing Non-Citizens, 2013 (Routledge), Stop and Search: Police Power in Global Context, 2013 (Routledge, with Ben Bowling) and Globalization and Borders: Death at the Global Frontier, 2011 (Palgrave, with Sharon Pickering).

Alan Gamlen is Associate Professor of Human Geography at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. He received his Doctorate (in Human Geography) from the University of Oxford as a New Zealand Bright Future Scholar. Alan’s research focuses on human migration and ethnicity, with special interests in the governance of international migration, diasporas and transnationalism.

He is author of some 50 articles, book chapters and working papers on these topics, appearing in a range of journals including Political Geography, Progress in Human Geography, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, and International Migration Review. As an editor, he has co-published several books and special issues (including Migration and Global Governance and Diasporas Reimagined), and he is the Founding Editor-in-Chief of the journal Migration Studies, published by Oxford University Press, and Co-Editor of the Policy Press book series on Global Migration and Social Change.

In an Australian first, since 2007 Professor Andrew Markus has tracked Australian attitudes towards immigrants, asylum seekers and cultural diversity through a series of national surveys for the Scanlon Foundation. His research is part of the Scanlon Foundation’s Mapping Social Cohesion project.

Andrew holds the Pratt Foundation Research Chair of Jewish Civilisation. He is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and is a past Head of Monash University’s School of Historical Studies. He has published extensively in the field of Australian race relations and immigration history.

Louisa Willoughby is a Senior Lecturer in Linguistics, School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics. She is a sociolinguist/ applied linguist interested in how people use minority languages in Australian society and issues people who speak these languages may face in education and health settings. She has a strong interest in migrant languages, especially for small and newly-arrived migrant groups.

A theme running through her work is how language and identity are intertwined and how linguistic practices emerge from social interactions and institutions. She is particularly interested in the adolescent life-stage and has conducted and supervised numerous research projects on language behaviour and language attitudes among groups of teenagers.

Jane Wilkinson is Associate Dean, Graduate Research and Associate Professor in Educational Leadership in the Faculty of Education, Monash University. Her research examines issues of social justice and equity through the lens of educational leadership, with particular foci on refugee education and leadership as practice/praxis. Jane has published widely in the areas of ethnically diverse women and leadership, refugee students and theorizing leadership as practice/praxis.

Jane’s most recent publications include Refugee background students transitioning into higher education: Navigating complex spaces (with L. Naidoo, M. Adoniou and K. Langat) (Springer) and Educational leadership as a culturally-constructed practice: New directions and possibilities (with L. Bristol), Routledge. Jane was the lead investigator of a Victorian Department of Premier and Cabinet social inclusion grant examining the key role that schools and educational leaders play in building social cohesion. Jane is the Chief Co-Editor of the Journal of Educational Administration and History and a member of the Australian Council of Educational Leaders (ACEL) Victorian Executive.

Kathryn Benier is a Lecturer in Criminology in the School of Social Sciences. Her research focus is urban criminology and the neighbourhood ecology of crime. In particular, Kathryn’s work focuses on hate crime and the impact of immigration and ethnic diversity on social relationships, cohesion and sense of belonging over time. She also has a research interest in family and domestic violence, with a strong focus on the geospatial distribution of offences and the consequences of victimisation. Kathryn has an interest in quantitative methodology, and extending new statistical techniques in other fields into criminological research.

Prior to joining Monash University, Kathryn worked at the Australian Institute of Criminology, and she also has experience in Queensland Government’s Youth Justice Performance and Reporting team. She completed her PhD at the University of Queensland, where she also completed Honours (1st Class) in Criminology, and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology.

Lesley Pruitt is Senior Lecturer in International Relations at Monash University, where she is based at Monash GPS (Centre for Gender, Peace and Security). Her books include The Women in Blue Helmets: Gender, Policing & the UN’s First All-Female Peacekeeping Unit (University of California Press) and Youth Peacebuilding: Music, Gender & Change (State University of New York Press).

She is also an author of Young People, Citizenship and Political Participation: Combatting Civic Deficit? (Rowman and Littlefield).

Samanthi J. Gunawardana is a Lecturer in Gender and Development in the International Relations section of Faculty of Arts, and a member of the Monash Gender, Peace and Security Centre.

Samanthi’s research examines the impact of development policy on employment systems, labour, and livelihoods among rural women in South Asia, with a particular emphasis on gender, development and labour in Sri Lanka. Key topics explored include labour migration, export processing zone employment systems, freedom of association, labour organizing, and connections between the political economy of households and development policy. Samanthi is the Course Director for the Master of International Development Practice.

Eleanor is a Lecturer in Politics and International Development and member of the Monash Gender, Peace and Security Centre. She has worked for 20 years on conflict, security and justice issues, including over a decade in post-conflict environments with the UN (including the UN Refugee Agency) and other organizations.

Her research and practice focusses on inclusive approaches to building security and justice, especially after conflict, including community safety initiatives and gender-responsive Security Sector Reform.

Dr Sara Maher

Sara's work is often to do with the South Sudanese Australian community in Melbourne which is grounded in a previous career in settlement and community development. Her other research interests include oral histories of conflict and forced migration, and the relationship between pre-migration trauma, belonging and social inclusion.

Antje Missbach is an anthropologist who has been working on transit migration in Indonesia since 2010. She has spent 14 months in the field in Indonesia talking to asylum seekers and refugees but also meeting Indonesian officials from the police, immigration and other relevant organisations. She is particularly interested in decision-making processes in transit.

Antje has finished working on her ARC DECRA research project titled, ‘People smuggling in Indonesia: causes, pathways and responses' and is now dedicating her research time to some new pieces of research including,'Indonesia’s refugee policies: responsibility, security and regionalism' and ‘Understanding Emerging Strategies in Regional Migration Governance'.

Dr. Steven Zech is a Lecturer in the Department of Politics and International Relations at Monash University. He serves as Deputy Director for the Master of International Relations program and specialises in international relations, comparative politics, and research methodology. His general research interests include political violence and terrorism, non-state actors, human rights, social identity, and network analysis.

Dr. Zech has worked as a researcher on collaborative projects related to nonviolent political change, global transnational terrorism, ethnic conflict, and militant violence in Iraq. Steve's latest research project investigates the motivations for volunteerism around migration issues along the US-Mexico border in Arizona.

Jarrett Blaustein is a lecturer in Criminology in the School of Social Sciences and the Major Convener for Criminology. His research primarily focuses on the relationship between crime, development and security as well as the mobility of crime control policies.

His research appears in leading criminology journals including the British Journal of Criminology, Theoretical Criminology, Policing & Society and the European Journal of Criminology and in 2015 he published a sole-authored book titled Speaking Truths to Power: Policy Ethnography and Police Reform in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Dr. Bodean Hedwards is a criminologist, focused predominantly on responses to slavery, human trafficking and related forms of exploitation in Australia and abroad, and specialises in qualitative research design and implementation. Bodean has conducted research and on these issues with government and non-government organisations, including with the Walk Free Foundation and the Australian Institute of Criminology. In addition to her research, Bodean is currently the project manager for Monash University’s Global Immersion Guarantee; an Australian first initiative that seeks to engage students in issues and solutions to the human impact on the environment in innovative and sustainable ways.

Francesco Ricatti is Cassamarca Senior Lecturer in Italian Studies. He has published extensively on the history of Italian migration to Australia, including his most recent book Italians in Australia: history, memory, identity (Palgrave, 2018). He is interested in transcultural, decolonial and intersectional approaches to migration studies, and has also written about the cultural politics of emotions that shape Australian debates about asylum seekers (see Journal of Australian Studies, 40(4), 2016). Francesco has a long experience collecting and analysing migrants' oral histories, and is currently the Chair of the Editorial Board of the Oral History Australia Journal. He is also a creative writer, and his first YA novel, co-authored with Gary Crew, will be published in 2019 by Harbour Publishing House. His most recent academic work focuses on participatory, digital and creative practices that can facilitate the social inclusion of migrants within transcultural cities, in Italy and in Australia.

Susan Carland is the Director of the Bachelor of Global Studies at Monash University. She completed her PhD in politics & sociology, and her research interests focus on Muslim women, sexism, violence, feminism, and social cohesion. Her book "Fighting Hislam: women, faith and sexism" was published in 2017. In 2019, she has a new book slated for publication with Melbourne University Publishing, and another collection she is co-editing for Brill entitled "Muslim women and agency: an Australian context".

Rita Wilson is Professor in Translation Studies in the School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics, Interim Director of the Monash Intercultural Lab and Co-Director of the Monash-Warwick Migration, Identity and Translation Research Network.

Her research sits at the interface of translation, intercultural and migrant cultural studies. She is interested in the complexities of cultural contact and the relationship between language, culture and social inclusion. Her work contributes to a growing body of interdisciplinary research that focuses on the centrality of language and translation when investigating topics such as citizenship; human rights and social justice; the representation of individual and collective cultural identities; the dynamic process of settlement. Most recently, she has published on identity and culture in migratory contexts, and on narratives of mobility and place-making. Ongoing research includes a large international and multidisciplinary project on the settlement trajectories, transitions and language stories of refugees.

Gabriel García Ochoa is a Lecturer in the School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics at Monash University. He coordinates the Cultural Competence stream for Monash University’s Bachelor of Global Studies. His research and teaching on cultural literacy focus on how literature and language learning can be used to build stronger, more resilient communities. His other research interests include intercultural competence, global studies, and translation studies. He co-coordinates the Special Interest Group on Higher Education for the Cultural Literacy in Europe Group, and is involved in a number of international projects with Cardiff University, the University of Warwick, and Cologne University.

Jeremy Breaden lectures in Japanese and Asian Studies in the School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics. His interdisciplinary reseach focuses on globalisation, education and employment systems in Japan and East Asia. He has a special interest in international student mobility and migration, and his published works on this topic include the monograph Articulating Asia in Japanese Higher Education: Policy, Partnership and Mobility (2018). Before entering academia Jeremy worked as an international communications consultant to higher education institutions and private corporations in Japan.

Jim Hlavac is a Senior Lecturer in Translation and Interpreting Studies, School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics. His research work includes looking at how public and social policy views translation/interpreting services as a means for all Australian residents to access publicly-funded services within the framework of an over-arching policy of multiculturalism. Further, he has led studies that document the linguistic effects of migration: code-switching between languages, structural change in ‘migrant’ languages and language shift to English. He has also conducted context- and setting-based studies on language choice amongst bi- and multi-linguals and researched their attitudes towards (Australian) English and the other language(s) they use. Lastly, he has studied the emergence of a ‘multicultural middle class’ and the relationship between linguistic repertoires and social inclusion.

Chloe Keel

Chloe is a Research Assistant with the Monash Migration and Inclusion Centre and a Teaching Associate in Criminology at Monash University. Her research has focused on migrant settlement experiences in Australia, the impact of visa regulation focusing on International student experiences and community policing.

Nicola Helps

Nicola Helps is a doctoral candidate, Research Assistant, and Teaching Associate in Criminology at Monash University. Nicola received her Bachelor of Arts with Honours in Criminology from Monash University in 2014. Her doctoral research explores the tensions and complexities surrounding the use and governance of public spaces within Victoria. Specifically, her research analyses the interplay between legal and non-legal mechanisms of governance and seeks to understand how this interplay contributes to the construction of inclusive-exclusive spaces.

In 2017, Nicola was awarded the Best Paper Prize at the Social and Political Sciences Annual Graduate Research Symposium for her paper exploring the challenges of conducting observational research within public spaces in Victoria.

Cathy Waite

Cathy Waite is a Research Assistant with the Monash Migration and Inclusion Centre and a Teaching Associate in the School of Social Sciences with Monash University, and the Department of Social Inquiry at LaTrobe University. She has a Master of Philosophy from the University of Melbourne, and a Bachelor of Arts with Honours from the Australian National University.

Cathy’s research currently focuses on investigations into social cohesion and multiculturalism in regional and urban places; housing and transport affordability; and funerary practices in Melbourne.

Meg Randolph

Meg is a current PhD candidate and Research Assistant in Criminology at Monash within the Border Crossing Observatory. Meg received her Bachelor of Criminology and Criminal Justice from the University of New South Wales in 2016 and her Arts (Honours) Degree in criminology from Monash University in 2017. Her doctoral research explores border policy communication to varying audience groups. This research is focused on the Australian policy of 'Operation Sovereign Borders' and the associated methods of communication currently deployed at a national, regional and international level.

Associate Professor Gil-Soo Han

Gil-Soo Han is an Associate Professor at Monash Communications and Media Studies. He received his PhD from the University of New England. Prior to joining Monash, he taught at the University of New England and the Monash University School of Rural Health.

Gil-Soo works with culturally and linguistically diverse groups such as immigrants and overseas trained professionals. He is interested in their experiences, how they represent themselves in, or how they are represented by, the media, and how their life is enabled and restrained by socio-cultural/economic factors. His publications include “Korean Diaspora and Media in Australia: In search of identities” (2012), “Nouveau-rich Nationalism and Multiculturalism in Korea” (2016) and “Minorities and Media in Australia: Producers, Industries, Audiences” (Co-Ed 2017).